Giuliano Carmignola is rightly regarded in the classical music world as "the prince of Baroque violinists" . . . [a] delightful and original CD . . . His fine sense of phrasing and lively bravado is evident, particularly in the last movement of the G major Concerto.

His dexterity is at its most sensational in the double-stopped allegro moderato of the First Concerto and the cadenza of the Fourth, while his ability to generate intense emotions by the sparest means leads to unforgettable things in the First's adagio. The Orchestre des Champs-Elysées under its leader Alessandro Moccia are classy: their acerbic sound keeps the drama uppermost and prevents everything from becoming cloying.

Record Review /
Tim Ashley,
The Guardian (London) / 09. February 2012

. . . this disc stands on its own merits, which are considerable: Carmignola plays as if this music had been composed specifically for him, with all the tonal richness and agility required of him and with a pinpoint accuracy of intonation . . . his Parisian accompanists match all their frontman's vivacity and charisma . . . performed as scintillating as this, they're worth an hour of anyone's time.

Giuliano Carmignola’s technical precision, disciplined musicality, and gorgeous tone bring every one of the composer’s intentions to vivid life

The remarkable Orchestre des Champs-Élysées − known for performing repertoire from Haydn to Mahler on period instruments − makes an ideal partner

Carmignola will tour the Haydn repertoire in Germany, Italy, Turkey, and France in 2012

HaydnViolin Concertos for the Esterházy court orchestra

Joseph Haydn’s concertos for solo instrument and orchestra may seem to be marginal to his vast symphonic output. Or at least the figures may suggest that this is the case, for his 106 symphonies inevitably overshadow a mere twenty-four concertos for strings, winds and keyboard instruments, not all of which have survived. Most of them date from Haydn’s early period as a composer, and only three – for keyboard, cello and trumpet – were written after 1770. If Haydn demonstrably took less interest in the medium of the concerto than he did in that of the symphony, then this was no doubt the result of his ambitions as a composer – in the years around 1760 and 1770 the symphony was regarded as the most prestigious of orchestral genres, whereas the concerto occupied a lesser rank in the eyes of composers and theorists. Writing in his Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (General Theory of the Fine Arts), Johann Georg Sulzer, for example, claimed that the concerto was basically “no more than an exercise for composers and performers and a very ill-defined amusement for the ear that aimed at nothing more than that.”

Haydn became vice-Kapellmeister to the Esterházy princes on 1 May 1761, the date on which he signed a treaty that represented only one of the measures undertaken by Prince Paul Anton in the spring and summer of 1761 with the aim of reorganizing his court orchestra. Bound up with Haydn’s appointment was the organizational division of the court’s musical life into two distinct ensembles. Church music was placed in the hands of the elderly senior Kapellmeister Gregor Joseph Werner, while the “Hoff- und Camer Musique” that was responsible for every kind of instrumental music and for secular vocal music fell under the immediate jurisdiction of the young Haydn. Paul Anton had a particular weakness for modern Italian instrumental music, and so he also engaged a number of outstanding musicians for the “Camer Musique”. When Werner died in 1766, Haydn assumed additional responsibility for church music at Eszterháza.

During the 1760s Haydn wrote a number of symphonies with demanding solo parts designed to showcase the talents of the virtuosos in his orchestra. Among these works are the three symphonies Hob. I:6–8 known as “Le Matin”, “Le Midi” and “Le Soir”. But he also composed several solo concertos at this time, all of them intended for the musicians in his orchestra and including – it is thought – his concertos for violin and orchestra. He is known to have written four such concertos, although only three have survived: Hob. VIIa:1, 3 and 4. The existence of the Violin Concerto in D major Hob. VIIa:2 is known only from an entry in the work-list (“Entwurf-Katalog”) that Haydn kept from around 1765, but otherwise there is no trace of this work.

Only in the case of the Violin Concerto in C major Hob. VIIa:1 do we know for whom it was written, for the composer’s work-list contains an entry “fatto per il luigi” (made for Luigi), Luigi being the Pesaro-born violinist Luigi Tomasini, who was only sixteen when he entered the Esterházys’ service in 1757. By 1790 or thereabouts he was being described in orchestral lists as its leader, or concertmaster. Conversely, we do not know for whom Haydn wrote the other two violin concertos. They may have been intended for Tomasini or for some other violinist in the court orchestra or perhaps even for the composer himself, for Haydn was an experienced violinist, a fact that we tend to forget today. Not only was he the leader of his orchestra but there is evidence that he also appeared as a soloist.

None of these three concertos can be dated with any great accuracy, although the C major Concerto that was written for Tomasini was almost certainly completed before 1765, making it the oldest of the three. The other two were probably written soon afterwards – the G major Concerto was advertised in a music publisher’s catalogue in 1769. It is clear from the small number of surviving sources that none of them was widely disseminated in Haydn’s day. They were not published until the 20th century.

The melodic style of all three concertos reflects their date of composition. Formally speaking, too, Haydn had recourse to late-Baroque Italian models. The opening movements of all three concertos are structured along similar lines inasmuch as all are cast in traditional ritornello form in which several orchestral and solo episodes alternate relatively loosely. There are no appreciable signs of modern sonata form with its consistent and cohesive thematic and motivic writing. On the other hand, the fact that the solo episodes invariably begin with the main theme from the orchestral ritornello already reveals a progressive tendency in the direction of thematic unity, as does the fact that the soloist is always accorded a second theme in the dominant. There are also points in common between the middle movements of all three concertos and between their final movements. In the Adagios the soloist’s expressive cantabile line takes precedence over the simple orchestral accompaniment, while the final movements are all examples of a carefree envoi and, like the opening movements, are cast in ritornello form. The solo writing is particularly demanding with its frequent scalar passages, double stopping and wide-ranging intervals – a further indication of the fact that all three works were written for genuine virtuosos. The orchestral writing is limited to strings, once again recalling the Baroque concertos of the earlier period – the wind parts that have survived in a handful of sources cannot be authentic.